President Robert Mugabe has assured the protection of South African-owned sugar processing giant Tongaat Hulett from war veterans and landless locals calling for the company to cede land.

Tongaat Hulett’s operations in Zimbabwe have in the past decade been targets of politically motivated takeovers. First it was the indigenisation drive in which the company was to sell majority ownership. However‚ it argued that through its contract farming scheme it was already indigenised.

Lately‚ politicians in Masvingo province have been pushing ahead with plans to invade the company’s sugar cane estates‚ but buoyed by bilateral trade agreements between South Africa and Zimbabwe‚ Tongaat Hulett managed to stay put.

“Those that are now demanding that they takeover some of his farm land (Tongaat Hulett)‚ that cannot happen. This is not unique to the sugar cane farms‚” Mugabe said at a rally.

Last week‚ presenting full year to March 2017 financial results‚ company secretary Bigboy Shava said the unit jumped to a US$7‚7-million profit from a previous loss of US$ 8‚8 million. He partly attributed the increase to improved sales helped by the government’s ban on importations to protect local industries.

“The intervention by government to protect the industry against unfair competition from imports continued to yield positive results while securing jobs in the industry‚” he said.